This invention relates to an aluminum nitride sintered body.
Aluminum nitride (hereinafter often "AlN") has high strength at a room temperature to a high temperature (ordinally, the sintered body has flexural strength of 40 kg/mm.sup.2 or more), and has excellent chemical durability. Accordingly, it has been used for refractory material and, on the other hand, it has been considered promising as a material which can be used for a heat dissipation substrate of a semiconductor device, taking full advantages of its high thermal conductivity and high electric insulation. Such an aluminum nitride has no melting point and decomposes at a temperature of 2789 K. or more, and therefore has been used as a sintered body except when it is used as a thin film or the like.
Conventionally, AlN sintered bodies are produced by pressureless sintering or hot pressing. In the pressureless sintering, compounds such as oxides of alkaline earth metals or rare earth elements are often added as sintering aids for the purpose of high densification of products. In the hot pressing, sintering is carried out at a high temperature and high pressure with use of AlN alone or AlN incorporated with sintering aids.
In the hot pressing, however, there are problems such that it is possible to produce sintered bodies having complicated shapes only with great difficulty, and yet with lower productivity and higher production cost. On the other hand, in the pressureless sintering, it is possible to solve such problems as in the case of hot pressing, but the thermal conductivity of AlN sintered bodies obtained is as low as 40 to 60 W/m.k at best, while the theoretical thermal conductivity of AlN itself is 320 W/m.k. Also, in the case of AlN sintered bodies obtained by the hot pressing, the thermal conductivity is as low as about 40 W/m.k or less when no sintering aid has been added, and 40 to 60 W/m.k even when the sintering aid has been added. Moreover, among the oxides of alkaline earth metals or rare earth elements those which are attributable to the thermal conductivity exceeding 40 W/m.k have been limited to calcium oxides (CaCO.sub.3) and yttrium oxides (Y.sub.2 O.sub.3).